Rebalancing a UI
I spent most of 2025 designing and building a new product at Observable called Observable Canvases — a collaborative, node-based tool for fearlessly exploring, visualizing, and analyzing data. Prototyping started with the tldraw SDK, which gave us an infinite canvas as well as a comprehensive set…
How are you Co-Creating With AI? Tell Us In Our AI Designer Survey
Chances are, if you’re a working designer or agency, you have incorporated many of AI tools into your workflow. Or, perhaps you’re still exploring whether these tools fit into your creative process. That’s OK, too. The point is, we’ve now had a few years of designers using Generative AI in some…
Visual design at Observable
There’s a particular kind of discovery that happens when you expose coded variables as UI — as sliders, color pickers, and toggles. You sweep through ranges you’d never have tried in code. You push two values to extremes at the same time just to see what happens. Some of what emerges is nonsense.…
Co-designing a chart theme with AI agents
I was a senior designer at Observable from 2020 to 2026, and spent the last sixteen months working on the company’s AI integrations. By that point I’d watched our customers run up against the same problem for years: our data visualization tools could produce almost anything, but it was hard to get…
With 200+ Artworks, ‘Rainbow Dreams’ Revels in the Vast Creativity of the Color Spectrum
From Do Ho Suh’s ethereal architecture to Kimsooja’s irridescent mirrors to Lauren Halsey’s fringed tapestry, a new book from Monacelli celebrates a broad spectrum of light and color. Rainbow Dreams features more than 200 installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs, and more that revel in the…
With 200+ Artworks, 'Rainbow Dreams' Revels in the Vast Creativity of the Color Spectrum
From Do Ho Suh’s ethereal architecture to Kimsooja’s irridescent mirrors to Lauren Halsey’s fringed tapestry, a new book from Monacelli celebrates a broad spectrum of light and color. Rainbow Dreams features more than 200 installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs, and more that revel in the…
Surreal Dreams Reign in Hieu Chau's Digital Illustrations
Hieu Chau compares his dense, dynamic compositions to his always active mind. Playing with scale and proportion, the Vietnamese artist renders surreal scenes in which flora and fauna converge and figures interact with the outside world as if in a dream. Chau, who was trained as a painter, now works…
Surreal Dreams Reign in Hieu Chau's Digital Illustrations
All images courtesy of Hieu Chau, shared with permission Hieu Chau compares his dense, dynamic compositions to his always active mind. Playing with scale and proportion, the Vietnamese artist renders surreal scenes in which flora and fauna converge and figures interact with the outside world as if…
Join Us for the Chicago Premiere of 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here'
We’re thrilled to invite you all to the Chicago premiere of Paint Me a Road Out of Here, the award-winning documentary from Aubin Pictures directed by Catherine Gund. Along with Intuit Art Museum and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at DePaul University, Colossal is co-hosting a screening…
Join Us for the Chicago Premiere of 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here'
We’re thrilled to invite you all to the Chicago premiere of Paint Me a Road Out of Here, the award-winning documentary from Aubin Pictures directed by Catherine Gund. Along with Intuit Art Museum and the Women’s Center at DePaul University, Colossal is co-hosting a screening of the film followed by…
Szilveszter Makó’s Surreal Photographs Reconstruct the Boundaries of Portraiture
Szilveszter Makó’s enigmatic photographs carry layers of mystery and introspection. Standing inside curious block-like backdrops and lain against two-dimensional fields of color and texture, his subjects seamlessly meld into stories in which every detail carries intention. Taking inspiration from…
Szilveszter Makó's Surreal Photographs Reconstruct the Boundaries of Portraiture
Szilveszter Makó’s enigmatic photographs carry layers of mystery and introspection. Standing inside curious block-like backdrops and lain against two-dimensional fields of color and texture, his subjects seamlessly meld into stories in which every detail carries intention. Taking inspiration from…
Ethereal Kites by Hai-Wen Lin Transform into Elegant Garments and Sculptures
In works that merge sculpture, fashion, and kite-making, Hai-Wen Lin traverses the thresholds that connect one’s physical self, the mind, and the elements. The artist describes their practice as “an act of reorienting: looking back, looking forward, looking in, looking up.” Using a wide range of…
Ethereal Kites by Hai-Wen Lin Transform into Elegant Garments and Sculptures
In works that merge sculpture, fashion, and kite-making, Hai-Wen Lin traverses the thresholds that connect one’s physical self, the mind, and the elements. The artist describes their practice as “an act of reorienting: looking back, looking forward, looking in, looking up.” Using a wide range of…
Along the Mississippi River, ‘Water | Craft’ Is a Confluence of Art, Culture, and Ecology
When we think of terms like “flowing” or “fluid,” we could be referring to the nature of water, but we can also just as easily apply these concepts to our understanding of art and craft. Fabrics “pool” and different mediums converge. The nature of creativity is often referred to in terms of an “ebb…
Along the Mississippi River, 'Water | Craft' Is a Confluence of Art, Culture, and Ecology
When we think of terms like “flowing” or “fluid,” we could be referring to the nature of water, but we can also just as easily apply these concepts to our understanding of art and craft. Fabrics “pool” and different mediums converge. The nature of creativity is often referred to in terms of an “ebb…
Minimal Shapes Layer into Dynamic, Abstracted Murals by James Reka
Although James Reka finds total freedom in his studio practice, it’s public art that he gravitates toward. The Australia-born artist researches the history of a building or neighborhood as he conceptualizes a mural and enjoys the constraints of creating within a particular geographic and cultural…
Minimal Shapes Layer into Dynamic, Abstracted Murals by James Reka
Although James Reka finds total freedom in his studio practice, it’s public art that he gravitates toward. The Australia-born artist researches the history of a building or neighborhood as he conceptualizes a mural and enjoys the constraints of creating within a particular geographic and cultural…
Traditional African Baskets and Pottery Meet Pop Culture in Donté K. Hayes’ Sculptures
Redolent of African basketry, hairstyles, headwear, and pottery, Donté K. Hayes’ abstract ceramic sculptures may be interpreted as poetic vessels, even though they lack traditional openings. While we easily associate clay pots and round woven forms with ideas related to storage, protection, and…
Painted by Hand, a Stop-Motion Film Eulogizes a Lost Childhood Home
Jason Mitcham’s childhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina, is no longer standing. In 2011, the local government seized the house and the land he grew up on via eminent domain to widen what was then High Point Road into what’s now Gate City Boulevard. Mitcham last saw the site in 2023, when a…
Amoako Boafo Weaves His Portraiture into an Architectural Replica of His Accra Studio
The expression “wherever you go, there you are” is often wielded to describe futile attempts to escape hangups, anxieties, and a variety of unwanted emotions. Although this truism is typically offered as a negative, it can also be read as a positive that provides comfort and stability amid new…